Tank car projects for Cocoa Beach -- 3

Now available on the web are Dave Hussey’s fine photos of many of the models displayed at Cocoa Beach. Included are photos of the four tank cars which I displayed, located on page 20 of Dave’s page at:  http://www.pbase.com/dh30973/cocoa2011
     The photos of course are not meant to document models in any detail, but they do show the overall look. The black table cloths form a background which may not be optimum, let us say, for the two tank cars which are black. In my previous posts under this title, I had not mentioned my SP tank cars, but I took one along to Cocoa Beach as a contrast to the smaller Plastruct-based cars, and because I talked about the detailing of these cars in my clinic at Cocoa. I did not take the Warren ICC 104 tank car, shown in the previous post with this title, as I already had four to take and with air travel, that seemed as much as I wanted to handle.
     I might mention that the only thing missing in these overall views by Hussey is the fact that the SP tank car depicted does not reveal, in a side view, its main feature: the aluminum end stripe which SP used to identify diesel fuel cars.
     Here is a photo which shows that aspect better. The decal challenge, of course, is that the car requires both white and black lettering. I had custom decals made by Rail Graphics in order to do this car (and several other SP tank cars).

Here may be noted other SP tank car paint schemes. Behind the aluminum end stripe car are a liquid sugar car, with the large “S” in a white diamond on the dome, a plain black car, and a Colonial Yellow car in gasoline service. All are conversions from the Athearn HO car, with domes raised to correct height, the dome walk on the left side removed in all cases, and other details upgraded.

     For anyone interested in modeling the SP cars, I’ve published a magazine article on that. Although these individual paint schemes were not discussed in my description of how to model these cars, the physical re-detailing was shown fairly completely. The article was in the SP Society magazine, Trainline, “Modeling SP Tank Cars,” issue no. 71, pp. 35–37, Spring 2002.

Tony Thompson